Alabama

Put microphones in front of Alabama coach Nick Saban on the Crimson Caravan, as reporters did during the Birmingham stop April 30, 2013, and you get comments on everything from his own program to the state of college football. (Vasha Hunt/vhunt@al.com)

When the most powerful coach in the nation suggests that the most powerful programs take their ball and keep it to themselves, it should send shock waves from UAB to Boise State and beyond.

"I'm for five conferences," Saban said. He didn’t elaborate, but presumably he meant the SEC, Pac-12, Big 12, Big Ten and ACC. That would leave C-USA, the Sun Belt, the Big East, the Mountain West, the MAC and the WAC on the outside looking in.

The Alabama coach didn’t stop there. He said he wants to see “everybody playing everybody in those five conferences.” Again, he didn’t dive into details, but do the math.

His suggestion implies going beyond the Big Ten’s discussion of a ban on playing teams from the Football Championship Subdivision to shutting out the lesser half of the Football Bowl Subdivision, too.

That would mean, say, Louisville instead of Western Kentucky on SEC non-conference schedules. Miami rather than Florida Atlantic or Florida International. North Texas? No. TCU, Texas Tech or Texas? Yes.

Saban’s not the first person to hint at a handful of superconferences breaking away from their mortal conference brothers in some way, shape or form. His is one of the most prominent voices to chime in on the subject.

Combine Saban’s five-conference suggestion with Mike Slive's recent thinly veiled threat about what could happen if the SEC and other major conferences don’t get their way in their desire to provide a full cost-of-attendance stipend for their student-athletes.

How soon before these heavyweights turn their saber rattling into civil war?

Saban’s scheduling proposal would force the members of these superconferences to radically alter their non-conference schedules. The prevailing attitude at the moment is to challenge yourself by playing one prominent team from another major league and then reward yourself by lining up three dogs with different fleas.

Alabama has played 24 regular-season non-conference games since Saban arrived in 2007. Here’s the breakdown of those opponents by conference or division:

As much as Alabama gets and deserves credit for going nose-to-nose with such traditional powers as Michigan, 17 of Saban’s 24 non-conference games to date would be off-limits to the Crimson Tide in the future if his notion came to pass.

If the big boys played only the big boys - stretching the definition of “big boys” to its breaking point to include the likes of Kansas and Indiana - it would send dominoes falling in every direction.

The budgets of FCS schools such as Samford and less-affluent FBS programs such as UAB and Troy would take a major hit if those guarantee games they like to play against SEC teams dried up and blew away.

Counterargument: When did it become the SEC’s job to pump money into C-USA and the Sun Belt?

At the upper level of the game, everyone from players to coaches to fans to media members would have to adjust their attitudes about what constitutes a successful season.

“The Giants won the Super Bowl, and what did they lose?” Saban said. “Six or seven games a couple years ago? It’s called competition.”

Easy for him to say. He’s turned the BCS Championship Game into his own private island.

The reality is, the NCAA has more have-nots than haves, and they would almost certainly vote down any proposal to allow five superconferences to exist in their own bubble. For that reason alone, there’s really only one way this radical reconstruction can happen.

The big boys would have to turn their backs on the rest of college football and not look back.